we close the (heavy, creaky) door on another spooky season. happy Samhain to those who celebrate.
remember to leave a glass of champagne and a goblet of claret out on the stairs for Vincent Price and Elvira, who have been out carousing with bois and ghouls.
right about now, if a shift as winter caretaker for the Overlook hotel opened up as an unpaid internship with nothing but the promise of a reference letter come April, i'd already be in the car.
@acetone_kitten watch out, looks like you got Neon Witch Hats coming in on the left there, they're an invasive species. [clanky snugs]
@BestGirlGrace Wife 2: This Time It's HERsonal
Hoooly 🥞 I had not expected them to have this much success just grafting metal into bones. The bone actually grew around it, does not seem infected, and the bone mount is actually so strong the bionic hand can just be attached to it. Look at these x-rays, this is like right out of a movie, if we can replicate this to other people it's going to change prosthetics/augmentation forever.
Revolutionary Bionic Hand Fuses With Woman's Bones, Muscles, And Nerves : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/revolutionary-bionic-hand-fuses-with-womans-bones-muscles-and-nerves
@johnshirley2024@wandering.shop and this space music too!
You already know that plastics aren't being recycled, not to any significant extent. But there are some good details in this MIT article. It talks about some promising options for increasing reuse and recycling, talks about bioplastics, and notes the emergence of a company called "Perpetual" that's trying to stand up whole new circular systems for food packaging in 3 (soon to be 4) USA cities. Ultimately though, the tide of plastics can't be stemmed until polymer manufacturers, most of which are also oil extractors like Exxon, are forced to pay for the costs of pollution.
#Plastics #environment #pollution #FossilFuels #Climate
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/10/12/1081129/plastic-recycling-climate-change-microplastics/
it's October. summer's corpse has just begun to turn.
Went to Cahokia Mounds Historic Site today and climbed Monks' Mound. pictured is St. Louis, and i also got a good view of the smokestacks of Alton IL, where my father's family first lived when they arrived in the States. somewhere in the tractless wastes between is where i live, and to the left of that somewhere is the Weldon Springs site--two earthen monuments separated by a short distance, vastly different in composition and intent.
i meditated briefly at the top and thought about place and permanence, how the indigenous people would have thought about time before the arrival of European colonists, about how they might have seen the universe in permanent cycles with change being an occasional anomaly; their world ensconced in an egg of eternity. i'm probably wrong about that. all i have are quasi-educated guesses.
looking out at the city in the distance, it occurred to me that this would be a great place to be to watch the nukes rain down. i'd have, what, three seconds of watching the bulidings crumble into ash and the Arch twisted up like a paperclip until the blast wave hit? what an amazing three seconds that would be...of course, knowing me, i'd be looking at my phone trying to pull up the "Koyannisqatsi" soundtrack, unable to remember if VLC sorted Philip Glass under "P" or "G" and i'd miss the whole thing. fwoosh.
I’ll write a fuller response later, but when billionaire tycoons who profit from genocide say that they want to become “supermen” while explicitly endorsing colonialism, that’s not optimism. That’s fascism with a smile. I actually make stuff, and help other people make stuff, and genuine optimism (technological or not) looks like community, nurturing, organizing and empowering — not indulging billionaires who profit from genocide.
i have had an extremely stressful day. my head reverberates with the rageful sussurus of a hornet's nest and my body aches like an empty factory. i have consumed painkillers and Relax-O-Drugz™ and will spend the next few hours bemoaning the fact that The World Was Ever Thus.
if you love me, send me pictures of Raquel Welch or Optimus Prime for to soothe my tortured optics.
TMKF (THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS) 9000
owner of driveinsaturday.org
head projectionist for Drive-in Saturday, the internet's premier movie-riffing organization ("Joel who?")
- = flesh is fleeting, chrome is forever = -